Letter, July 21, 2016

I hope you’re feeling better today. I am feeling nostalgic this week. On Monday, the sky was that perfect summer blue and it was filled with big July puffy clouds. The locusts were singing, the trees are at the height of their greenness, and I was transported immediately back to my childhood and summer vacation. I wasted so much of my summer vacations, spending hours upon hours inside watching VH1 and MTV, which actually showed music videos at the time. That’s how old I am.

Of course, it’s hard to appreciate a vacation after it has been going for a couple of months, I suppose. Maybe you need the contrast between a hustle and bustle day versus one where the porch is the epicenter of your plan. Maybe we should go to school all year round and get summer vacation as adults. But then how would that work for teachers? Somebody figure this out for me.

I have not touched on the news of the day, which is that a Black care giver was shot in North Miami while he was lying on the ground with his hands up. The police officer was asked why he shot this man, who was completely unarmed, and his response was, “I don’t know.” I think it would be better to say, “I have racist programming in my head that I can’t overcome, and when I see a Black man my first instinct is to shoot.” Saying “I don’t know” makes it seem like you decided to destroy an ant hill or something. “I don’t know. I didn’t have anything else to do.”

It will be interesting to see how this one gets turned around. “By lying down I assumed he was taking an aggressive position.” Maybe.